Sliding doors are commonly used on vans and other vehicles for allowing entry and egress of passengers, parcels and other items to be hauled or transported. Sliding doors are desirable because they permit wider access to a vehicle entrance space than a conventional hinge mounted door, and, perhaps more importantly, they do not extend nearly as far into an area around the vehicle thus decreasing the number and severity of door induced dents and dings in adjacent vehicles.
An automotive vehicle sliding door typically has two or three sets of rollers mounted within corresponding longitudinally oriented tracks. For example, an upper track is located above the sliding door entrance way, a center track is located between the rear quarter panel and the inside rear trim panel, and a lower track is situated below the entrance way. As the door is unlatched and pushed rearward, it is routed by the tracks slightly outward of the vehicle exterior and slides adjacent to the rear quarter panel.
Conventional vehicle design practice is to place the sliding door on the side of the vehicle opposite the driver's side, and to locate a filler pipe access lid on the driver's side rear quarter panel. Such a design avoids a collision between the sliding door and the filler pipe access lid if the access lid is open for refueling and the sliding door is subsequently opened.
Some vehicles, however, may have the sliding door and the access lid on the same side of the vehicle, or may have sliding doors on both sides of the vehicle. In either case, the potentiality exists for the aforementioned collision between the sliding door and the access lid.
A device utilizing a door track obstruction was shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,454,618, assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference. In that application, a stop member mounted proximate a door track has a first, obstructing position projecting into an inner portion of the track so as to obstruct movement of the sliding door along the track and a second, retracted position withdrawn from obstructing the track. The position of the door stop is actuated by the fuel filler door so that when the fuel filler access lid is opened, the stop member is moved to the obstructing position to prevent collision of the sliding door with the access lid. When the fuel filler access lid is closed, the stop moves to the retracted position so as not to obstruct movement of the sliding door within the door track. Such a device makes no provision, however, for preventing a collision between the filler door and the sliding door after the sliding door has been opened. In addition, there is no provision for locking out the filler door under any circumstance.